Today as I was reading a new post about OpenOffice 3.0 over at Chief Home Officer, I remembered my very short-lived love affair with OO3, and its predecessors. For some reason, I just can’t seem to stick with OO, no matter how much they update it. I find myself trying it for a week or so, then finding the following problems

1. Slow to load. Sorry, the Quickstarter helps, but when I need to fire off a quick document, I find I wait 2-3 times as long for OO Writer to load versus Word 07, or I can jump into Google Docs. I found some tips, such as disabling Java, but then that disables some of the plugins, so it’s a catch-22.

2. Compatibility - Everyone says that OO’s perfectly compatible with Office, but I find that if I do any sort of document layouts within my Writer document, then export/save as a Word doc, the image is always moved around in some wonky way. Likewise, if I bring a Word doc into OO, the image always seems to be moved around. That’s problematic when you send a client a document, and they ask why the images have all been moved around. So I end up editing in OO, then still having to open it in Word to check before send. Not exactly efficient (note - this sometimes happens in Google Docs, too)

3. It’s not online. I’m already dealing with the hassle of flinging Word docs around via email, why do I want to have a different client app, with the same issue? If I have to collaborate on a document, then I’m just going to use Google Docs or Zoho.

4. No mail merge function, or rather, no easy mail merge function for creating directories or catalogs (you can easily do envelopes, letters and labels, however.) Sure, OO has it, but it’s very limited, for example, you cannot easily create a directory report from a spreadsheet of data. You can do it, it’s just that it’s far from easy or intuitive, and I create a lot of reports, so I rely on this function.

Now, I should be fair, and highlight some of the really good features of Open Office 3.0. So here goes -

1. It’s free. If you need a robust office suite, but can’t pay $99 (or more, depends on the retailer) for Microsoft Office, then here you go.

2. A familiar interface - I truly hate the Ribbon Interface in Word 2007. Just yesterday, I spent about 20 minutes trying to find where they hid a function I desperately needed at the time. Was it really necessary to gut the UI we’ve known for over a decade just to have something trendy? Thankfully, OO sticks to the tried-and-true interface of office apps, so you won’t feel lost in any way.

3. No new formats every year - Want to confuse a client? Send them a .docx or .xlsx file. That’ll fill your inbox with “What’s this?” messages. Contrary to common belief, IT departments and consumers no longer upgrade software for whatever is new any more. Many folks hold onto what’s working for them for as long as they can, which means you shouldn’t just assume everyone’s using what you are. With OpenOffice, they don’t keep changing the format (though don’t send your clients the default format files, they’ll never know what these are, instead, save as Word 97-2000). You can do this with Office 2007 also (down-save), but you are constantly nagged to not do it every time you open or save a doc.

4. No licensing - This of course goes along with the free thing, but is there anything worse than travelling and suddenly having MS Office think it’s an unregistered copy? That’s happened to me twice with 2007, and one time, when I tried to activate, it refused, telling me I had a fraudulent copy, even though I had multiple legitimate licenses.

5. Fully licensed PDF support - There are plenty of plugins and freeware apps to let you create PDFs from MS Office, but it’s nice that PDF support is directly integrated into OO 3. Along with that, there’s a new plugin that lets you edit PDF’s, which is really nice to have when someone sends you a big PDF that they need text extracted from.

There you have it, some reasons against, and some for, OpenOffice 3.0. While I don’t think it’ll keep me from using Office or Google Docs, it’s certainly nice to have a solid option out there.